The best part of the sun, where it melts away for its own reflection.
To prove something.
We stand in snake skin and
leopard print, digging for
bones of the extinct
while money blows up the noses
of our youth.
I thought about you today.
Your early reflection smoking
life into you,
black coffee lungs watching the sunrise bring life into
the rest of us.
My skin is hanging up now.
I am melting away for my reflection to do the same.
To prove something.
This desert is muddy today,
rats scamper under fury.
Little girls chew
off November toes. They kneel in provocation, stretched t-shirt
over back yard fences.
Dogs bark like bitches, I count them – they live free
with dirty kneecaps, laughing at me. It is fair, I know.
It’s the clock,
just; disgusting me.
The rats scurry down wet streets
where my sister plays with
spores. I stalk her like cat play
while she plucks
lice from her
eyes.
Her nudity is a familiar tub
where streetlights meet
sloppy abortionists.
Once, she was me. We shared
charcoal milkshakes and
flirted with shapes of sour
angels. Now, great love,
is dust of dead skin.
She is piles of vomit under
cloistered stubbornness.
In twenty years, I will be solid.
Midnight will dream of my desert
and sick rats walking in
late, chasing yellow
mold across tarred gutters
where her soul growls empty,
nothing to spare.
First greet is at seams
that thread life to life.
She blossoms fresh blue,
nervous laughter sifts through
her eyes. Not me.
I am fog thick of red rage,
a fire smoldered by hard smoke hiatus,
stoned like rolling tonic waves.
She dips her fingers down my throat,
caressed by silence – she knows me at once.
I pour myself onto her.
I tell her how I know the moon,
how I sleep with it’s chill and
am never alone.
She tells me it’s habit, like her
laugh, that I’m addicted, I’m turning
to ashes. I say, “I don’t know if you’re a ghost of
me or I’m a ghost of you.”
She swings bright over Summer where
I plant my roots, under bed sheets
and claim the Earth as our own.
She was a kingdom,
I was in ruin.
I let loose my whiskey hot breath
on her air,
she strips bare of deliberation,
dripping thirst from her soft light
and we creak together in the shadows
of sensation.
And in the mix of time and transcendence,
frost grows over my eyelids.
I am blind.
Mouth froze,
then my insides.
She hammers at me for weeks,
heaving in heavy tumor.
She begs back for the comfort of the
roots we birthed together.
Life drops wet down my cheeks,
she drapes over me
for years,
Or is it me over her?
I wish….
I want….
The seasons have stopped.
I can’t find her blue through the fog.
Peel my eyelids away from my face
help me focus, help me see
reach into my center
kiss my galaxy
I spin madly away from this life
gnawing on dead space
his fingers spread deep
white laced with heaven,
I swirl toward angels and hell
all at once
He is Apollo –
Both God and Demon of love
I puff on his glass , inhale his acid
He takes me to paradise
with wings
covered in black ice
When he yanks me back to this truth
I fall to my knees and pray
I want him to stop
but beg him to stay
He smiles
then rolls his fog down my throat
God gave me my heart
but this Demon has my soul
there is no grace. Each flake is a poisoned needle
jabbing in my skin.
Every sting of winter is a piece of
her blue eyes,
and
his blue lips barely parted in a box.
I imagine his last breath and
wonder if it felt like Winter,
if it felt like the cold prick of
hell jabbed into his veins.
Winter has chained me to the past.
What is lost weighs more than everything
Winter has ever given. I imagine her singing,
and if she sounds like Summer.
I know that I am here now, and I can never go back,
but still, I wonder,
when it snows in the desert.
Oh young, on the day she turns
over a new leaf, sun-damaged
veins, shrivelled death
six-feet to go, to sleep,
to walk in to
her dreams, flat-lined
sex, drawn out of virgin
delirium
strawberry fields in
fast decay, on the day
she turns, sixteen
nights after the drunken man
is fast asleep
on the edge,
on metal terror
pumping through her
veins
this is the one,
the hidden light,
night fury flies past her eyes
everything is tight
blood crushes blood, through
life-less young eye lids
she cries, he’s too fast,
a shrivelled raisin on black top
oh young, that night, and what it means,
the night takes, the air
rips
open, stealing her lungs on the day
she turns.
*Please read thoroughly. I rarely take guest posts, but I believe whole-heartedly with what this article states. “Addiction is a disease, dependency is not a choice.”
This article is written by Camille Mitchell for http://treatmentnetwork.com/
Myths about Addiction
The “War on Drugs” has been raging for over 40 years. Yet, one in twelve American’s is still addicted. Many of them are your friends and family. You know them. In a phrase, “the system has failed.” Prevention measures are largely ineffective. Treatment efforts have failed to meet expectations. The numbers are staggering in terms of price and victims. We sit and wonder why our health care costs are skyrocketing but just have to look across the room at a son or daughter that contributes to the billions spent every year on medical cures for addicts. The American taxpayer shoulders these costs because these addicts cannot pay the bill for themselves. They are a pervasive social burden that comes with a price tag. The number $600 billion is bandied about as the combined costs of medical, economic, criminal, and social costs that are borne by “the system” every year. How many schools would that build in rural Appalachia for a population that is undereducated and underprivileged? How much national debt would that retire so we do not burden our future generations with our bad judgment and poor decision-making?
We have been making too many excuses for too long and investing money in theories and processes that do not work. The money drain has to be stopped and the social problem has to be cleaned up. The prisons of this country are filled with drug addicts that are slapped on the wrist and returned to society to continue to be addicts. We build more jails, create more judges, and build more courthouses to accommodate our social failures every year. We fail because we do not understand. We fail because we choose to lock away the problem with the hope that the few months or years they are out of the mainstream will cure them. Yet, they still get their drugs while they are incarcerated and we return them to society with the same problem as when they went in but fit for society because we “rehabilitated” them. Hogwash.
Only bad children use drugs … then why do 80% of our children use drugs at one time or another? We invoke social morality to soothe our egos and alienate our won children in the process. Health and safety is the social issue, not good and bad.
Stress, inability to cope and trauma are the root causes of drug use. Yet, our social focus is on “Just Say No”. You prevent drug use by your daughter by dealing with her ability to handle the social pressures of life. It is possible to prevent drug use. It is impossible to stop drug use for those that are hell bent on doing it. The difference between the two is like night and day.
Addiction is a disease. It is chronic and progressive. Dependence is real, not a choice. Children who become addicted are not weak and without morals. They are ill. They need help.
We need to wake up and smell the roses. If we insist on throwing money at the problem to solve it, then we had better find a lot more money. The problem will not be solved by spending money on the things we do now. Attack the causes of the problem, not the symptoms.
~ by Camille Mitchell
Guest post by http://treatmentnetwork.com/
Brought white blossoms,
He did, on curved gravel
roads that stood well.
I couldn’t hear him.
I was riding Bennie, my pale habit.
My powder pastry mixing with me
like toxic nasal drip. I picked up my feet,
Bennie lifted me up, up, up.
We were deep in azure film,
scraping the sky for nothing.
He stayed with His ignorant box of diamonds,
level grounded,
staunchly fixed on my weightless finger.
Benny pulled me.
We floated to the tops of stars.
We floated to the top of dark.
We floated too far,
into the “too dark”.
Bennie was lost.
My ghost!
My shadow, swallowed
by infinity.
That’s when the buried corners came,
with hard-boned smiles and
broken teeth,
thin skinny, barely protection!
They came hard. Shattering moon windows,
bursting starlight.
They came for me!
I tried to scream but I was dry.
They picked at me.
They grabbed.
They reached through me,
straight through my green guts,
where Bennie was.
Hiding.
They shook,
shook,
shook,
trying to shake me off him.
They scrambled everything inside me.
Then, I fell.
Out of the stars. Out of the dark.
Back to the dirt where He was waiting
with a quiet ring, bent knee.
I did not know him.
I could not know him.
The buried corners
didn’t shake him out, but
they took my brain and
put the dark in its place.
Now, while my days sleep elsewhere,
He waits.
I’ve been digging through past lives for
months, searching
for fingerprints
in five feet, eleven inches of
deceit dust covering everything
I know! How many times did he shed his skin
back here? Dead parasites are proof!
He was on the roof when it caved.
Climbed over four hundred days
with water and
a bible.
He left spoons and mattress burns below him,
tribe familiars blossomed following his climb,
extending gratitude,
tribute!
And he climbed, praising God, until he reached
Grace,
humble resiliency…
We sang!
We cried and we sang!
We wrapped our hugs in packages with golden bows,
throwing them to a skeptical world! We danced, twirled
through moon phases, a
fantastic celebration!
Then, a sharp raucous!
Brusque thunder crushing eardrums!
Blood poured from our ears
as the noise devastated. Bible pages
fell like confetti over
our joy; a tearful,
thick pollution!
We cried!
We fell and we cried!
We wrapped our memories in boxes with golden locks,
sealing them, our treasures. Silently, we
remembered, our Requiem,
a tribute!
All we know is that he climbed,
and that underneath five feet, eleven
inches of his dust, it is
in God that we place our
rusted
trust.
Miss Red Jacket
layered
red threaded
protected
found four chances
dug them
out of the sand
distinct
diamonds
four different
slants
similar
polar opposites
yet
parallel
four unique prints
inked
on
black and white
printed
nearly tattoo’d
she chooses a rock
dug out of the dirt
in
needle park
veined purple
swallow’s grandma’s stew
grandma’s eyes
grandpa’s semen
anything
for black tar
fire spoons
and
a blanket in Needle Park
Miss Red Jacket
misses
firm
athletic
blood tubes
that act as an overcoat
laying
over layers
Horse pipes have
wrapped her
soft spot
for
the last of
their life time
he
with blood tubes
plucked
from dirt
in needle park
a diamond
uncleaned
uncut
melting banknotes
wages
melting mud
puddles in
metal necks
skinny little pricks
sucking
mud puddles dry
pushing
pushing destruction
deep
into her
thick red
shield
pushing
pushing red threads
to distress
unthreading
unravelling
leaving
a naked woman
with nothing
but a
dirty
rock
maggiemaeijustsaythis 